Down To Earth

Editorial. Sunita Narain.
March. IV. XIV

WhenPlanting Trees is a
Curse

by Sunita
Narain

Forests have been
blacked out in the economic assessment of the
country. The Economic Survey does not even list
forestry as a sector, for which accounts are
prepared. Instead it is lumped together with
agriculture and fisheries. In other words, there
are no estimates of the productivity of this
sector, which encompasses over 20 per cent of the
country’s land area.

This is because the
focus of forest managers is on conservation and
forest productivity is nobody’s business.
The forest survey report says forest cover in the
country is stable but growing stock of forests has
decreased between 2005 and 2009. Currently, we
import more and more of forest produce, from pulp
to timber. It is for this reason that revenues
from forests are declining in state budgets, which
creates pressure for their diversion to more
productive uses.

This is clearly
untenable. We need forests to be used for
productive purposes. But we need to ensure that
this time, unlike in the past, it does not lead to
rampant deforestation and
over-extraction.

We need to re-position
forests as integral to the economic growth of
states. This means we need to learn to plant
trees, and also to cut and then replant. We need,
quite literally, to make money on our forest
wealth. But we need to learn how to do that
without destroying the forests.

In the pre-1980 period,
before the advent of the forest-environment
conservation era, the emphasis was on extraction.
India lost large areas of forests to commercial
interests. The pulp and paper industry was given
forests at throwaway rates and timber logging was
rampant. The needs of local people for firewood
and grazing cattle put pressure on forests. In the
mid-1980s, the first remote-sensing exercise on
green cover showed large forests had been lost to
development and subsistence pressure. At this
time, the only concern was conservation and
protection.

So, during this period
the Forest Conservation Act was enacted to
centralise all decisions on forest diversion for
non-forestry projects like dams and mining. In the
mid-1990, the Supreme Court issued directives on
tree felling in forest areas. It then followed up
with orders that defined “forests”
based on its “dictionary meaning”
irrespective of the ownership of the land. In
other words, any area with tree cover would be
classified as forest and brought under the ambit
of forest protection laws. In addition, the forest
departments of different states made it virtually
impossible to get the permission to cut or
transport felled trees—even if these are
privately grown. In fact, it has now become so
difficult to cut trees on individual lands that
people would prefer not to grow trees at
all.

All this has meant that
we have been able to stem the rate of
deforestation. There is no doubt about this. But
this is only half achievement. Forests in India
are still under huge pressure and shrinking over
time. First, the rate of diversion of forest land
for development projects has been unprecedented in
the past five years. This diversion also happens
because there is no value seen in
forests—other than the cost that has to be
paid for diversion of land by the project
proponent. Instead there is value attributed to
the dam, road or mine for which the land is
needed. So, the pressure on forestland is bound to
increase. We must also note that forests are the
last remaining swathes of public land in the
country and acquisition of private land will
become even more expensive and contentious in the
future.

Secondly, local needs
and illegal extraction exert pressure on forests.
Today, it is an inconvenient truth that the
poorest people of India live in the richest
forests. The management of this green wealth has
not brought any benefit to local people. While
deforestation and forest diversion will grow, we
do not have any viable strategy for re-greening
these areas. So, we will lose bit by
bit.

How do we change this?
One, we need to urgently value the economic, the
ecological and livelihood potential of forests and
to incorporate this into national accounts. We
need a robust methodology to bring the tangible
(what we can measure) and intangible costs
together. As yet there is much talk about green
accounting but methodology is weak. For instance,
there is no real assessment of minor (non-timber)
forest produce. Other assessment of forests’
contribution to livestock or the hydropower sector
is inflated or non-existent.

Two, we need to use this
methodology to pay for standing forests. The 12th
and 13th finance commissions allocated funds for
standing forests but they are a pittance. We then
need states to transfer payment for standing
forests—protected for biodiversity or
watershed or other purposes—to local
custodians. This will build local economies and
local support for forest protection.

Three, we need to use
robust accounting methodology to increase the
productivity of the remaining forestland. But we
know that the business of cutting and planting
trees cannot be successful without people who live
in the forest. So, this becomes the new
opportunity for employment and economic growth.
The way ahead is to build inclusive economies
using green wealth.